Akçam: ‘Turkey’s Denial Defines its Present’

The following is a speech delivered Turkish historian Taner Akçam to the Swedish parliament on the 103rd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Akçam is the Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marian Mugar Endowed Chair of Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark University.

Taner Akçam

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First and foremost, I want to thank you for inviting me to such an important commemoration. This invitation carries symbolic meaning not only on an individual level; but the fact that a Turk was invited to speak to you here today conveys a meaningful message. With this invitation, the Swedish Parliament and my Armenian friends have made a clear statement: That the resolution of Armenian-Turkish tension can be achieved through human decency; that our place of birth and ethnicity are not central—rather, what counts most is our attitude toward facing the crimes committed in the past. Taking a stand defines who we are. Speaking out about historical crimes, especially genocide, is the responsibility of all humanity. This is not an issue for Armenians and Turks or Jews and Germans, alone.

Therefore, I would like to offer my sincerest gratitude once again for offering me this distinguished podium and the opportunity to enumerate the historical crimes for which Ottoman-Muslims (Turks, Kurds, Circassians, Alevites, etc.) bear responsibility. The central issues that Turks must confront, is our inability or refusal to acknowledge the massacres and genocide carried out against Ottoman Christian citizens—the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks. While mass violence is not unique to Turkey, it is a major feature of the turmoil that characterizes the Middle East.

It is difficult to determine the beginning- and end-dates for historical processes; however, between the 1878 Berlin Congress and the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the Ottoman-Turkish lands experienced waves of earthquakes comprised of a series of massacres that constitute a genocidal process. The 1894-6 massacres of Armenians and Assyrians; the 1904 Sasun and 1908 Adana massacres of Armenians; the 1913-4 ethnic cleansing and massacres of Greeks; the 1915-18 genocide of Armenians and Assyrians; and the 1921-22 Pontus Genocide represent the most significant tremors of this earthquake.

The 45-year long (1878-1923) earthquake, which can be characterized as the Ottoman genocide of Christians, continued during the Republican era at various intervals. The Anti-Jewish pogroms in 1934 in Trace; the 1937-38 Dersim Genocide; the 1942 Wealth-Tax; the pogrom of 6-7 September 1955; the slaughter of intellectual youth during 1960, 71 and 80 military coups; and the never-ending suppressions of the Kurds, including their systematic torture and killings in the 1990s and 2015 represent some examples of this continuation.

If, today, Turkey struggles to establish a regime that respects human rights and continues to face significant hurdles in its democratization, it is due to the refusal to confront and face the crimes committed in the past. Moreover, the challenges are not limited to Turkey’s internal affairs, but also extend to the wider region. The military operations in Syria and the war with the Kurds are also manifestations of this inability to face the past.

This state of affairs raises a central question: Why must we face our history? Why must we memorialize and remember past crimes? Allow me to present five fundamental and interconnected reasons.

The first important reason why we should remember and commemorate past atrocities is because we have to remember the victims, pay our respects to their memory and re-humanize them. Dehumanization is essential to the perpetration of mass atrocities. The most effective way to inspire perpetrators to kill is to make their victims inhuman. This is how individuals overcome their normal human revulsion toward murder. Nazis classified the Jews as bacteria or microbe/germs; in Rwanda, the Hutus called the Tutsis cockroaches. The Ottoman Turkish rulers described Armenians as a tumor in the Turkish body that had to be excised. This term was used very often by the leaders of Teshkilati Mahsusa. By depriving the victim group of its humanity, perpetrators pave the way for mass-atrocities.

Commemoration is, if nothing else, an act of protest against this repulsive phenomenon. Re–humanizing the victims by honoring them and restoring their dignity is one of the most important steps in denouncing the perpetrator.

The second reason for remembrance is that it creates the foundations for co-existence. Communities that have experienced a painful past filled with violent acts, can only reconcile and live together peacefully if they “talk” about this common past with each other. Failing to do so, they will continue to regard each other with doubt and suspicion and ultimately get crushed under the burdens of the past. If Turks cannot engage in an honest reckoning of their crimes, enter into serious dialogue with Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians, and listen to the deeply painful histories of these communities, the victim groups will never feel any measure of trust for Turks. The only way for Turks to achieve peaceful coexistence at home, and with their neighbors, is for the Turkish government and its people (including Turks, Kurds, Alevites, Sunnis, etc.) to acknowledge historic wrongs honestly and to accept responsibility for their actions. Without genuinely confronting and accepting this painful history, a common future will never be constructed.

The third reason why we must face our history is as follows: We remember the past and commemorate mass atrocities because this is a basic prerequisite for a democratic society. In order to establish a democracy that respects human rights, it is essential to first confront human rights violations. Failure to do so, and impunity for past crimes, inhibit a nation’s commitment to respect present day human rights. How you view and regard your past will also determine how you construct your future.

In the late Ottoman period, all Christians living on Ottoman soil were stripped of citizenship and their most basic human rights were violated. The government viewed Christian demands for equality and justice as grave threats to national security. Kurds experience the same undemocratic abuses today. Their basic demands for freedom and justice are judged as threats to Turkish security and the government violently suppresses them. It should not, therefore, surprise us that those who, in the past, met the Christian populations’ demands with repeated violations of their human rights employ the same strategy toward Kurds and their demands today. Recognition of historic injustices is essential to establishing a democratic environment that values human rights.

The fourth important reason for remembering and honoring the past is to raise our voices to say, “Never again.” In order to avoid mass atrocities, we must remember! But remembering, alone, may not be enough to prevent the repetition of past injustices; however, it is an important pre-condition. Denying historic wrongs, leaves the door wide open for the potential risk of repeating the same crimes, the same mistakes over again. By denying massacres and crimes, Turkey sends the message that it would perpetrate the same crimes again, if threatened. For this reason, it is not an exaggeration to claim that Turkey represents a potential threat to the entire region.

The last important reason to commemorate past atrocities is to fight denial and overcome obstructions in the quest for truth and justice. This core principle is crucial, for it effectively demonstrates that acknowledging a historic crime is not limited to remembering an event of the past, but that it constitutes a prerequisite for the consolidation of peace, security and stability today.

Thus, the fight against denial is crucial and we should decide how best to fight it. There are two basic misunderstandings regarding genocide denial and, especially, Turkish denial. Firstly, denialism is often regarded as a mistaken but tolerable ideological attitude toward mass atrocities. The second misunderstanding is related to the first and assumes that confronting denial is about establishing a “moral” attitude towards a single crime that remains forgotten in the pages of history. Any connection with the present is effectively walled off.

Both of these misperceptions are a logical consequence of what I call temporal compartmentalization: Namely, the tendency to place the past and present into different boxes and to ignore their interconnectedness. It is enormously problematic to sever the ties between denial and contemporary political problems. Denial is not only about an ideological attitude towards the past and the demand for recognition of historical crimes is not confined to a moral conviction [or conduction Sunday Church services] regarding past events.

Denialism is a structure that cannot be simply relegated to past atrocities. The denialist structure produced and continues to carry out policies in the present day. In this regard, it would be appropriate and reasonable to compare Turkish denialism with the racist apartheid regime of South Africa. The system, mindset and institutions of apartheid were constructed upon racial differences; denial of the Armenian genocide has similar roots. It was manufactured upon the discrimination and exclusion of ethnic-religious minorities and considers the democratic demands of these groups a national security threat that has to be eliminated.

In the past, the emergence of the so-called “Armenian question” was the result of Armenian demands for equality and social reform, which arguably would have led to a better and stronger Ottoman society. Nevertheless, their demands and the Armenians themselves were considered a security threat, which caused them to become targets for massacres and genocide. Denying this truth constitutes the foundation of the Turkish concept of security, which is not only based on the denial of crimes but also on the perception that the promotion of basic democratic rights, such as equality under the law, social reform and freedom of speech threaten national security.

The irony is that denying genocide and criminalizing demands for a more democratic and just society because of national security are the real obstacles to democracy. The violent Turkish response to calls for human rights is counterproductive. In fact, they lead directly to real security problems. This “self-fulfilling prophecy” was a root cause of the Armenian genocide and it shapes the Kurdish problem today.

Instead of solving Kurdish problems by seeking solutions that would lead to a more democratic society, institutionalized denial resurrects the same security concept and declares that Kurdish demands are an essential security problem for the nation. This is the short story of the invasion of Syria by the Turkish Army.

The picture is very clear. By denying what happened in 1915, Turkey reproduces the institutions, social relations, and mindset that created the events of 1915 in the first place. Denial is not simply a defense of an old regime (Ottoman Empire). Denial also fuels the politics of continuing aggression, both inside and outside Turkey today.

It is not hard to show the strong interconnection between Turkey’s denial of the Armenian Genocide and Turkey’s domestic and regional policies today. Without addressing in detail the ongoing dark developments in Turkey today, particularly since the attempted coup of July 2016, allow me to express the current situation in numbers. Currently, more than 10 parliamentary representatives and around 150 journalists are incarcerated; approximately 4,000 academic intellectuals have been forced to step down from the university positions, and Kurdish cities have been destroyed and burned to the ground. According to a Freedom House Report in 2017, a total of 162 media companies have been closed down; these include 48 newspapers, 60 television and radio stations, 19 periodicals, 29 publishing houses and six press agencies.

In addition to these realities, Turkey is experiencing a mass exodus of its intellectual elite – perhaps the largest one in its history. More than 1,000 academics, journalists, and literary intellectuals have already fled to Europe. Turkey is galloping towards – if it has not already arrived at—a totalitarian regime. Turkish Government used the coup attempt as an excuse to crash the democratic opposition. And their primary argument in support of these policies is that the demand for more democracy and respect for human rights is a threat to its national security and must be crushed before it spreads.

Aggression towards Syria is another part of this Turkish national security policy. Perceiving Kurdish demands for a democratic structure in Syria or in Turkey as a national security treat, Turkey invaded Syria. Ziya Gökalp, one of the ideologues of the Young Turks and an architect of late Ottoman policies, described Ottoman aggression towards the East during the First World War through the analogy of the “Red Apple.”

The “Red Apple” exemplifies a belief that dates back to old Turkish lore and is meant to reflect Turkish sovereignty over the universe. When talking about battles and victory, Ottoman Turks would characterize their triumph as having reached the “Red Apple” and the “Red Apple” has come to symbolize the idea of pan-Turkism, the uniting of all Turkish peoples. Knowledge of this mythology is crucial to understanding the Armenian genocide. It is extremely revealing that Tayyip Erdoğan referenced this legendary symbol just before the 2018 Afrin operation in Syria. In a speech delivered on Jan. 22, Erdoğan answered the question “Where are we going?” with the response “Towards the Red Apple… yes, towards the Red Apple”.

All of these policies are conceptualized, decided, and implemented by the highest constitutional institution in Turkey: The National Security Council. In 2001, this supreme constitutional authority established a “Coordinating Committee for the Fight Against Baseless Claims of Genocide.” All of the important ministries, including the Armed Forces, are represented on this committee, which is chaired by the Vice Prime Minister. The sole mission of this institution is to fight those who demand recognition of mass-atrocities, including the Armenian Genocide, committed by successive Ottoman-Turkish governments in the past. It is not a coincidence that it is the same institution that considers the democratic demands of Kurds and other minorities and regional developments in Syria to be a national security threat.

The picture is clear. As long as Turkey continues to regard facing historic injustice with honesty and acknowledgment of wrongdoings as a national security threat and refuses to come to terms with its past for national security reasons, further security problems will ensue. Recognition of the Armenian genocide is not a thing of the past that can be forgotten when confronted with the seemingly more pressing issues of today. On the contrary, it is the key to solving contemporary security problems.

This brings me to my next point. There is a widely accepted opinion, which contends that while resisting denial and demanding the recognition of a historic crime might be a meaningful and amiable moral attitude, however, we must be realistic and prioritize the more crucial and compelling security and national interests of contemporary states. Accordingly, in situations where the recognition of an historic crime is in conflict with the national interests and security of today, it is meaningless and nonsensical to maintain the demand for recognition because the event in question has long passed. To insist on it, represents a fundamentalist moralist attitude.

The discussions within the West, and especially in the United States, regarding the 1915 genocide and relations with Turkey are generally conducted within this framework of realpolitik. According to this perspective, the “national security concerns” of the West (the U.S., Great Britain, France, Germany, etc.) in the Middle East are placed on one side, while the recognition of a 100-year-old genocide is placed on the other. And for this reason, instead of pressuring Turkey into changing its denialist policies towards 1915, for decades these countries have opted to support Turkey. Today, it is hard to find any member of the American Congress who contests the fact of the Armenian genocide. But this very same congress still—to this day—denies recognition of the Armenian genocide, solely because they pit “national interest” against “morality” as two mutually exclusive positions. This is plain wrong.

As I illustrated in the Turkish case, and as recent developments clearly demonstrate, there is a strong interconnection between security, democracy and facing history in the Middle East. Even a passing glance at the region makes it clear that historical injustices and the persistent denial of these injustices by one or another state or ethnic-religious group is a major stumbling block, not only for the democratization of the region, but also for the establishment of stable relations between different ethnic and religious groups. You cannot solve any problem in the Middle East today without addressing historic wrongs because history is not something in the past; in the Middle East, the past is the present.

Putting it another way, one of the main problems in the region is the insecurity felt by different groups and states towards each other as a result of events that have occurred in history. When persistent denial of these pain-filled acts is fundamental to your security policy, feelings of insecurity towards the other become inevitable. This is what we call the security dilemma: What one does to enhance one’s own security causes a reaction that, in the end, can make one even less secure. For this reason, any security concept, any policies of realpolitik in and for the region that obfuscates past atrocities and ignores addressing these historic wrongs is doomed to fail in the end.

We must cease this senseless distinction and compartmentalization between the recognition of 1915 and contemporary realpolitik. Until today, the West has either failed to recognize 1915 for reasons of “security” and “national interest” or, even in cases where it adopted some affectatious parliamentary decisions, continued to carry out policies that gave support and political cover to Turkey. If democracy, peace and security is the objective—the end-goal—of the policy of the West towards Middle East, this type of behavior must be terminated.

For it is this attitude and behavior of the West that emboldens Turkey to continue its denial of 1915 and encourages it to persist with its policies that threaten democracy, peace and security in the region today.

Let us not forget—denialism is not a problem exclusive to Turkey and its history. It is the collective and fundamental problem of Europe with regard to its future and regional peace and security. If we do not place the struggle to face our past and fight against denialism at the center of our politics, we fail not only today, but we also risk losing our future. There is no difference between fighting Turkish Denialism and fighting the South African Apartheid regime. Apartheid did not collapse from internal pressure alone. The support of the international community was also extremely important. I appeal to you from this podium today to end this detrimental compartmentalization between past and present and to grasp the severity and magnitude of Denialism’s impact.

A thorough and honest commemoration of a heinous crime perpetrated in the past cannot be accomplished in a Sunday church service. If we want to respect the dignity of victims; to establish justice, to create democracy, peace and stability in the region and to stop mass-atrocities in the future, we must fight denialism not only as an attitude towards a past crime but also as a crime against human dignity today…

Who is Taner Akcam? Where have you been? A renown Genocide scholar who has presented hundreds of incredible public lectures, has been invited to speak at numerous scholarly forums, has published significant work on the Armenian Genocide the latest being his brilliant book “Killing Orders”, conducted important research which is fundamental to our cause, has taught scores of courses at the university level, mentored many students at the graduate level at Clark University that has produced recently two PhD.s in Genocide Studies with several more matriculating.
A man of remarkable energy , enthusiasm and commitment. He honors the Armenian people every day with his work.